Nuclear power and natural gas heating coming in handy now (Chicago: credit, loans)

[Avondalist]

Electricity rates are through the roof all over the country now due to the cold snap. There have been price rises in Illinois, but they have been more muted than in places farther south and west.

I'm glad the leaders in Illinois had the foresight to build the most nuclear power capacity of any state in the country back before Three Mile Island. Nuclear power is not evil; in fact it's very sensible. We are lucky that Illinois was able to build out those plants before the regulations and loss of skill made building new nuclear power plants prohibitively expensive.

Combine that with heavy use of natural gas for heating and we are weathering this brutal cold much more cheaply than others.

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

Nuclear is a big part of our future, likely with the smallish designs currently under review. Renewables make sense only where they make sense - my guess is that nuclear ends up taking over for fossil plants as they are retired more so than renewables. But ideally, every home will have solar panels for at least some part of their consumption, as panels get better over time, if only to ease the strain on the grid (plus no transmission losses).

What happened in Texas was due to their infrastructure not being designed to handle a once-in-a-lifetime weather event. The same thing could happen in Illinois should we experience prolonged cold like is normally experienced in North Dakota or Montana (or Phoenix levels of heat!) Luckily, we've only had temperatures hit in the -20's three times in my lifetime (1983, 1985, and 2018, I believe), and both for relatively short durations. The cold snap that hit Chicago in 2018 stressed infrastructure, but luckily, not as badly as Texas is currently experiencing. What is happening in Texas goes to show how fragile we really are, every one of us should take some lessons from the "Preppers". Never forget how many Chicagoans died during the heat wave of July, 1995 (although Paris suffered much worse than we did).

[Avondalist]

Some people in Texas are reporting four figure utility bills.

https://www.newsweek.com/one-texas-r...r-8000-1570343

Royce Pierce, a 38-year-old contractor and Texas resident owes power company, Griddy, $8,162.73 for his electricity use in February. The total was a steep increase compared with his bill for his two-story home last month, which was $387.79.

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by Curly Q. Bobalink

Nuclear is a big part of our future, likely with the smallish designs currently under review. Renewables make sense only where they make sense - my guess is that nuclear ends up taking over for fossil plants as they are retired more so than renewables. But ideally, every home will have solar panels for at least some part of their consumption, as panels get better over time, if only to ease the strain on the grid (plus no transmission losses).

What happened in Texas was due to their infrastructure not being designed to handle a once-in-a-lifetime weather event. The same thing could happen in Illinois should we experience prolonged cold like is normally experienced in North Dakota or Montana (or Phoenix levels of heat!) Luckily, we've only had temperatures hit in the -20's three times in my lifetime (1983, 1985, and 2018, I believe), and both for relatively short durations. The cold snap that hit Chicago in 2018 stressed infrastructure, but luckily, not as badly as Texas is currently experiencing. What is happening in Texas goes to show how fragile we really are, every one of us should take some lessons from the "Preppers". Never forget how many Chicagoans died during the heat wave of July, 1995 (although Paris suffered much worse than we did).

No, not a once in a lifetime event, ERCOT didn't winterize the natural gas power plants there, and far greater capacity factor was down compared to renewable sources. They didn't learn any lessons from 2011 winter storm or the 1989 arctic outbreak. Arctic events can occur commonly every 15-30 years there. Basic lack of utilities not being held accountable and Texas being their own grid and deregulated.

[RisingAurvandil]

I will give credit to Ameren Illinois. Their service has been top notch for a long time.

Watching Texas also made me thankful that we have basements and insulation up here. We lost power for at least three days due to an ice storm in the 00s. That house never dropped below 50 and the basement never dropped below 55.

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

No, not a once in a lifetime event, ERCOT didn't winterize the natural gas power plants there, and far greater capacity factor was down compared to renewable sources. They didn't learn any lessons from 2011 winter storm or the 1989 arctic outbreak. Arctic events can occur commonly every 15-30 years there. Basic lack of utilities not being held accountable and Texas being their own grid and deregulated.

You may by right, I'm waiting for a concise, non-politically charged engineering summary / autopsy of the events, please share if you have one. But the news reports I saw stated that in many areas, records going back to the 1930's and 1890's were being broken, hence my "once in a lifetime" comment.

In the U.S., infrastructure is built to withstand expected regional weather, likely to the historical extremes or slightly beyond. But Texas simply doesn't build to Nebraska, let alone North Dakota, weather standards. Their building codes only dictate what, maybe fifteen inch deep footings (frost lines), and they probably don't bury their water pipes much deeper. And, the heating systems built into water storage tanks were likely overwhelmed by this storm as well. I'm not sure if they lost power, which took down the water infrastructure, or lost water, which took down the power infrastructure, or both.

But again, I'm not certain how Chicago would fare in sustained, -30°F temperatures (similar to the impact of what's occurring in Texas). Didn't the summer of 1995 cause about 700 deaths in Chicago? And likely, it wasn't even that extreme when compared to summer in the worst parts of Texas. So I'm not so quick to throw stones, but if it is indeed the fault of the energy management companies, then they need to be punished for their shortcomings.

[wase4711]

I did business for years in Texas, and going to Dallas in the winter was always a challenge; sure, the winter is nothing like the midwest winters, but MULTIPLE visits there were a dangerous, treacherous, ice/snow saga, and even though these storms weren't "typical", going below freezing for multiple days, and getting snow and ice as well is a pretty regular occurrence. they dont need 450 snow plows and 100 tons of salt, but they need to upgrade their winter "game" big time

I guarantee you that after this fiasco, they will be "winterizing" all their utilities, which should have been done decades ago..cold and ice is NOT unusual in the Dallas metro area in the winter; why it wasnt done decades ago is the question now..

[fusillirob1983]

These utilities may cry poor or that they're trying to keep rates really low for consumers, but I suspect most of the public would likely be okay with (not that they have much of a choice) slightly elevated rates for the utility company to make the capital investment in winterizing equipment to prevent an event like this again.

The utilities are generally not spending their own cash for these types of improvements. They get a loan/loans to fund the capital investment. The lender will have the utmost confidence that the utility will pay down the loan. The capital costs and interest will be made up through the increased and ideally more stable rates rather than the spikes being charged last week.

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by Curly Q. Bobalink

You may by right, I'm waiting for a concise, non-politically charged engineering summary / autopsy of the events, please share if you have one. But the news reports I saw stated that in many areas, records going back to the 1930's and 1890's were being broken, hence my "once in a lifetime" comment.

WSJ: The Texas Freeze: Why the Power Grid Failed

That's the best politically-neutral explanation and summary that I've been able to find. Virtually everything else is trying to blame someone—especially Ted Cruz who ironically has zero to do with the entire situation.

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

Originally Posted by Hiruko

WSJ: The Texas Freeze: Why the Power Grid Failed

That's the best politically-neutral explanation and summary that I've been able to find. Virtually everything else is trying to blame someone—especially Ted Cruz who ironically has zero to do with the entire situation.

Thanks for the link, I was only able to read the beginning due to their paywall. I just watched a decent video on it, which in summary said pretty much that:
When the wind power was lost due to icing, and consumer demand went through the roof due to the (record) cold, the "charge" (voltage) in the grid dropped. When that happened, the electrical supplier instituted rolling blackouts (similar to what happened in California, and was unavoidable) in order to keep the voltage in the proper range, which unfortunately took down many natural gas pumping stations, which made the crisis that much worse, as gas-powered electric generating stations were lost as well. Parts of the grid were then shut down, leaving many people with neither electrical or gas utilities. Water pipes then froze and burst, compounding the problem further.
Is that consistent with the WSJ article?

So yeah, Texas should have had the foresight this even had a high-enough likelihood of happening that they should have been prepared for it - not much difference from Fukushima. The folks responsible for managing the state's grid have some 'splainin' to do, and fixes need to be put in place. Again, my takeaway is that this event shows how fragile we ALL are to disruption in utilities. One of my greatest fears in Illinois is purposeful disruption in natural gas due to terrorism, same thing with the electrical grid. They don't have to go after the nuke plants or gas storage and pumping systems themselves, enough damage could strategically be done within the transmission systems to turn Chicago, Minneapolis, etc. into winter wastelands, especially when we can't count on 60°F weather in ten days time, which TX had working in its favor. It makes me want to move south, not north.